articles

Abstract: This article challenges the ethical allegory of the widely hailed film Cannibal Tours, drawing on two decades of ethnographic research in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, most recently in 2010. First, I sketch the contemporary plight of a middle Sepik, Iatmul-speaking community that yearns for a “road” to modernity and tourism but increasingly sees itself as “going backwards.” Second, I argue that tourism allows middle Sepik inhabitants to express artistically subtle messages about contemporary gender, identity, and sociality in the Melanesian postcolony. Third, I demonstrate what happens when the tourists go home. And almost all of them have done so, especially after the sale of the tourist ship, the Melanesian Discoverer, in 2006. Tragically, the recent decline in tourism corresponds to a dramatic degradation of “basic services” offered by provincial and national authorities, and a devastating flood during the 2009–2010 rainy season. Facing all this, Iatmul feel increasingly disenfranchised, despondent, and desperate to attract new tourists and to discover, after a century of unfilled commodity desires, the source of material plenitude locally associated with modernity. Toward this aim, villagers now speak about something I never expected to hear in this once prosperous community: narratives about deceased kin, voyaging back to the village like ghostly tourists on a numinous ship, striving to bring local people wealth and commodities, only to be barred by Europeans. What happens after Cannibal Tours? The ideology of a cargo cult.Keywords: tourism, development, Sepik River, Papua New Guinea, Cannibal Tours, art, cargo cult

Abstract: From a French perspective, French Polynesia is often described as an overseas territory that has been virtually decolonized through the granting of statutes of autonomy. In stark contrast, pro-independence local political parties still consider the country a colony and have successfully lobbied for a process of decolonization under United Nations oversight. This article assesses these competing claims through an analysis of the political evolution of the territory since World War II. The analysis shows that French Polynesia has never been genuinely decolonized. In the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, the French government arbitrarily pulled the territory out of all available international or French domestic decolonization processes, subjecting it to an anachronistic restoration of colonial authority that included the arrest and long-term imprisonment of its major political leader and a series of other unusually undemocratic measures. This led to, and culminated in, the construction of a nuclear testing facility, with tremendous environmental, health, and economic consequences during the following three decades. Later, after giving in to local protests demanding autonomy, France misused that concept not only to cover up a de-facto continuity of colonial rule but also to create a corrupt authoritarian local government favorable to French interests. Recent actions taken and attitudes demonstrated by the French government and its representatives, including repeated arbitrary modifications of the rules of local politics and meddling therein in order to secure their favorites in power, have shown that French colonialism in French Polynesia is alive and well. An international campaign for the decolonization of the country is thus clearly warranted.Keywords: Tahiti, French Polynesia, colonialism, neocolonialism, autonomy, decolonization, self-determination

Abstract: Using food regime analysis, this paper explores how neoliberal agricultural policies are affecting food sovereignty in Pacific Island countries (PICS). The principles of food sovereignty are strongly rooted in Pacific Islands agricultural practices. However, under the corporate food regime, the locus of control for food security is shifting away from communities and the nation-state to the world market. It is argued that food sovereignty in the Pacific Islands is being undermined through membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), WTO accession agreements, and regional free-trade agreements. These agreements seek to reduce tariffs, curtail government support to local agriculture, and oblige PICS to extend private property protection to plants and seeds. Driven by commercial interests, trade agreements are also facilitating control of communal lands by the private sector, which has serious implications for food sovereignty.Keywords: food sovereignty, free-trade agreements, World Trade Organization, corporate food regime